1. Adult psychiatric inpatient admissions and length of stay before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in a large urban hospital setting in Vancouver, British Columbia.
- Author
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Russolillo, Angela, Carter, Michelle, Guan, Mejiao, Singh, Pulkit, Kealy, David, and Raudzus, Julia
- Subjects
SUBSTANCE abuse ,PATIENTS ,PSYCHIATRIC treatment ,HOSPITAL admission & discharge ,HOSPITAL care ,MENTAL illness ,MULTIPLE regression analysis ,HOSPITALS ,RETROSPECTIVE studies ,PERSONALITY disorders ,DESCRIPTIVE statistics ,CHI-squared test ,METROPOLITAN areas ,LENGTH of stay in hospitals ,COMPARATIVE studies ,ANXIETY disorders ,CONFIDENCE intervals ,DATA analysis software ,COVID-19 pandemic - Abstract
Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic individuals with mental illnesses faced challenges accessing psychiatric care. Our study aimed to describe patient characteristics and compare admissions and length of stay (LOS) for psychiatric-related hospitalizations before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis using health administrative data comparing individuals with an acute psychiatric admission between two time periods: 1st March 2019 to 31st December 2019 (pre-COVID) and 1st March 2020 to 31st December 2020 (during-COVID). Multivariable negative binomial regression was used to model the association between most responsible diagnosis type and the two-time periods to hospital LOS, reporting the Rate Ratio (RR) as the measure of effect. Results: The cohort comprised 939 individuals who were predominately male (60.3%) with a severe mental illness (schizophrenia or mood-affective disorder) (72.7%) and a median age of 38 (IQR: 28.0, 52.0) years. In the multivariable analysis, anxiety disorders (RR: 0.63, CI: 0.4, 0.99) and personality disorders (RR: 0.52, CI: 0.32, 0.85) were significantly associated with a shorter LOS when compared to individuals without those disorders. Additionally, when compared to hospital admissions for non-substance related disorders the LOS for patients with substance-related disorders were significantly shorter during the COVID period (RR: 0.45, CI: 0.30, 0.67) and pre-COVID period (RR: 0.31, CI: 0.21, 0.46). Conclusions: We observed a significant difference in the type and length of admissions for various psychiatric disorders during the COVID-19 period. These findings can support systems of care in adapting to utilization changes during pandemics or other global health events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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